CHAPTER XIV.AN UNEXPECTED VISITOR.

“Keep these scrappers apart, Pink, you and Darrel,” said Merry, moving over to Clancy’s side. “If that ball is only thirty feet away, Clan,” he added to his red-headed chum, “we’ll be able to get it, all right.”

“I don’d pay for nodding,” puffed the enraged Fritz. “Dot greaser feller kicked him ofer, und you vill take der money oudt oof der pay vat comes py him.”

“Diablo!” snapped Silva. “Dat Dutchmans get de ball from de camp—I no get him. Take dat dinero out of me, and I quitmuy pronto.”

“You peen some pad eggs,” wheezed Fritz, “und I preak your face in!”

“Yah, yah, yah!” taunted the Mexican. “You not able to break de face in.”

Ballard and Darrel, enjoying the situation more than they cared to show before Fritz and Silva, clung to the two would-be sluggers and held them apart. Merriwell, on his knees at the rim of the cañon, turned to look around at the Dutch boy and the Mexican.

“Cut out this fighting,” said he sternly. “The one that strikes the first blow will have the five dollars taken out of his pay. Keep hands off of each other and neither of you will have to pay a cent if the ball is lost. Understand that, Fritz? And you, Silva?”

The warlike ardor of the two was appreciably lessened. Fritz ceased his floundering struggles to get at the Mexican, and Silva suddenly grew docile. Merry’s threat was a master stroke.

“Let them go, fellows,” went on Merry, smothering a desire to laugh. “You and Silva go back to camp, Fritz, and if you’re not peaceable, just remember that your pay will be docked. And hereafter leave our athletic equipment alone. I don’t object to your doing a little training—in fact, I think it would be a good thing for each of you—but when you go at it again you’d better have an instructor. I’ll be glad to put you through a course of sprouts any time you feel the need of it.”

Without indulging in any remarks, Fritz and Silva started off in the direction of the mesa and the camp. They did not travel in company but straggled along at a distance from each other. As soon as they were out of sight, Ballard turned around with a laugh.

“That five-dollar play of yours, Chip,” said he, “was a winner. Fritz is a tightwad, and Silva pinches a dollar till he makes the eagle squeal. They’ll be peaceable for a while, take it from me.”

“How about the ball, Chip?” inquired Darrel, hastening to join the two on the edge of the cañon wall.

“There it is,” Merry answered, pointing downward.

The wall was a sheer drop, and the ball could be seen lying on a narrow shelf at least thirty feet below. A small bowlder lay near the edge of the shelf, and the oval had been caught between that and the clifflike wall from which the shelf projected. Below the shelf was another fall of thirty or forty feet to the bottom of the cañon.

“How the mischief do you suppose the ball happened to lodge there?” inquired Clancy. “If it had been kicked over the cliff, I should think it would have fallen too far out to hit the shelf.”

“Probably,” Merriwell suggested,“it just rolled over the rim and dropped straight down. Anyhow, there it is, and it’s up to us to get it.”

Darrel straightened on his knees and looked around him at the lay of the land adjacent to the brink.

“It’s easy enough to get the ball, fellows,” said he. “There’s a paloverde, just back of us, growing in the edge of that clump of greasewood. We can splice a couple of reatas, hitch one end to the paloverde, and I can shin down and be back with the ball in no time.”

“Where’ll we get the reatas?” returned Clancy. “I’ve got one, but it’s a scant thirty feet long. Fritz—darn him!—cut off a piece of it the other day to use for something or other.”

“As far as that goes,” put in Merry, “I guess we could pick up an extra piece of rope around the camp. But maybe we won’t have to try this reata business. Get some sticks and let’s see if we can’t dislodge the ball and knock it into the bottom of the cañon.”

They gathered pieces of dried timber and rained them down on the shelf. Several clubs reached the ball, but the bowlder held it firmly.

“No earthly use,” said Ballard. “The pigskin is wedged there as though it was in a vise.”

“Thou art so near, and yet so far!” hummed Clancy, staring down at the ball. “I wonder,” he continued, “if we couldn’t come up from below? The cliff doesn’t seem so steep under the shelf.”

“I was thinking of that, Clan,” Merry answered.

“It won’t take me more than half an hour to scare up that reata and an extra piece of rope,” said Darrel. “I reckon the spliced ropes are our best bet, Chip.”

Merry had been taking stock of the cliff face above the shelf. Wind and weather had worn it smooth and slippery, and there was not a projection in the wholethirty feet from the brink to the shelf which a climber could use in getting back to the top of the wall.

“Strikes me,” said Merry, “it’s a difficult job, not to say dangerous. How are you on the climb, Darrel?”

“Well,” he admitted, “I can throw a rope a heap better than I can climb one, but I’ll gamble my spurs I can come over that thirty feet of wall without much trouble.”

“It’s as smooth as glass,” remarked Ballard. “All your weight would be on your arms from the moment you left the shelf—you couldn’t use your feet at all.”

“My arms would stand it.”

“Suppose you had the ball under one arm, Curly?” Clancy queried.

“What’s the matter with kicking the ball into the cañon?” returned Darrel. “I wouldn’t have to tote it back.”

“That’s right, too,” said Clancy.

“Before we try the rope trick, Darrel,” spoke up Merry, rising to his feet, “we’ll go back to camp; come down the cañon and see if the wall under the shelf can’t be scaled.”

“It can’t,” asserted Darrel, with conviction. “I can see enough of it from here to make me sure of that.”

“We’ll look over the ground from below, anyhow,” said Merriwell. “Come on, fellows; there’s no use hanging around here.”

“Wait a minute, Chip,” called Ballard, who was still standing at the cañon’s brink. “There’s a man on a horse coming up the gulch. Wonder if he’s bound for Tinaja Wells? I wouldn’t swear to it, but I’ve a notion the rider is Colonel Hawtrey.”

At this Darrel whirled with a muttered exclamation and peered down at the white streak of trail angling back and forth among the trees and masses of bowlders. The horseman was proceeding slowly northward, his headbowed in deep thought. In a few moments he would be abreast of the lads on the top of the wall, and almost under the shelf.

“Itisthe colonel!” muttered Darrel, in an odd, strained voice. “Why do you suppose he’s riding this way? I’ll take my solemn Alfred he’s bound for our camp.”

“Don’t be too sure of it, old man,” said Merriwell. “He pulled out with the Gold Hillers early this morning to see them safely settled in a camp of their own. That bunch went south, didn’t they? Well, it stands to reason that the colonel has to come this way in order to get back to Gold Hill.”

“No, Chip,” disagreed Darrel, “the colonel’s easiest course to Gold Hill from below Tinaja Wells would be by the other trail from Dolliver’s. He’s got business at our camp, and that’s the reason he’s coming this way. Maybe,” and Darrel’s face filled with foreboding, “what he’s got in mind has something to do with me.”

“Don’t be in a taking about it, Darrel,” Merriwell answered, laying a hand on his new chum’s shoulder. “It’s a cinch that anything the colonel may have in his mind can’t hurt you. If he’s going to be a visitor, we’d better go down and see what he wants.”

Without delaying further, the boys started on their return to camp. In spite of Merriwell’s reassuring words, however, the troubled look did not leave Darrel’s face.

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